Dr. Lavendar's People

Poor Amelia, in her bedroom, in the chilly December dusk, sopped her eyes with cold water and looked in the glass. "I mustn't cry any more," she said to herself, despairingly – "they're so red now!"

A door opened down-stairs, and there was a burst of laughter; and Mrs. Dilworth, in the cold twilight, went on sopping her eyes. Tom and the girls evidently didn't need her. "They could get along just as well without me. And if the Lord would take me, Tom could – could – so he could – "

Her soul was dumb, even to itself; but she knew what it was that Tom "could" do.

And she knew it without bitterness. Like every other woman whose love for her husband has in it the maternal element (and most good women's love has this element), she had always felt that if she died Thomas ought to marry again; but this simple creature went one ahead of that rather elementary feeling, and specified: she was willing to have him marry her.

"If the Lord would only remove me," said poor Milly, looking miserably in the glass at her plump figure, which showed no indications of removal. Her eyes were hopelessly red; she didn't see how she could possibly go down to supper. But of course she had to go down. The mother of a family and the mistress of one servant must go down to supper, no matter what the condition of her eyes may be. She slunk into her seat behind her teacups, and scarcely dared to look about her noisy, hungry circle, still less at her Thomas, who was smiling to himself, but who did not share his amusement with his family. Still, when he suddenly said something about the refreshment of talking to intelligent people, it was not hard to guess the direction of his thoughts. "It sharpens your brains up," said Thomas. "I was going to suggest, Milly, that you should ask Helen Hayes to tea again; but she's got company; and when they leave she's going off to make a visit to some of her relations, she tells me."

Amelia's mild lips tightened silently. So they had been together again. Her hand shook as she poured out another cup of tea for her Thomas, who took that moment to say, with all a husband's candor, that she was getting fatter than ever. "I thought you were starving yourself to get thin, Milly?" he said, smiling. Milly smiled, too, faintly; but she was saying to herself: "What did they talk about? How long were they together? Oh, if I could only be taken away!"

It would be interesting to follow the processes of a mind like Mrs. Dilworth's: how did a wife and mother of children reach the point of feeling that her family would be better off without her? Anybody in Old Chester could have told her such a belief was folly, and wicked folly at that. But it seemed just plain reason to Milly Dilworth: "I'm not necessary to anybody. Thomas likes somebody younger. He can't marry her because I'm alive; he could marry her (and she would be good to the children) if I were not here. But I am!" she would end, hopelessly.

Morning after morning, as she went about her household duties, or when before tea she sat in her little, old rocking-chair, mending the family stockings, she used to break herself against the hopelessness of the situation: She was there; and unless the Lord would remove her (any other sort of removal was impossible to her devout imagination) Tom could not have what he wanted – yes, and needed, too. For it was at this period that Mrs. Dilworth recognized, what most wives of men do recognize at one time or another, that although being a wife and mother is the only vocation of a married woman, being a husband and father is only one of many vocations of a married man. Hence the companionship of an eminently worthy wife is almost never enough for the male creature. When this harsh truth burst upon Milly, she wiped her eyes on the stocking she was mending and groaned aloud. But she did not rail against the fact, nor did she attempt to deny it; wherein she showed a superfeminine intelligence. She only said to herself that Thomas could not have what he wanted while she was alive; yet she couldn't, it seemed, die, although she was so miserable that she didn't know how she lived! It was at this point that she began to make wild schemes to relieve the situation: Suppose she asked that Hayes girl to come and make them a visit? But no – a man wants more than to just look at a pretty girl across the table. Suppose she went away herself and made a visit, and asked Miss Helen Hayes to come and keep house for her? (Like all good wives, Milly had no hesitation in offering up another woman to the pleasure of her lord.) No; people would talk about Tom if she did that… The amount of it was, poor Milly, although she did not know it, was really planning that Thomas should have two wives at the same time – and, dear me! how that would simplify things! There would be the old, sensible, matter-of-fact wife to mend his stockings and order his good dinner and nurse him through the indigestion consequent upon the dinner – the old, anxious wife, who has had the children and reared them, who has planned and economized and toiled with him, who has borne the burden and heat of the day at his side – the prosaic wife, who gives, unasked, such good advice. Every one will admit that this elderly person has been, and (to a limited degree) still is, a necessity to every Thomas. But sometimes Thomas thinks, in his simple way, that it would be pleasant to have the luxuries as well as the necessities of life; to have, for instance, a young wife – a pretty wife, clever and light-hearted and gayly tyrannical; a wife who never knew enough to advise anybody, who should be a relaxation and a refreshment, and just a little bit of a fool; for, as every intelligent (unmarried) woman knows, men like fools; feminine fools. Of course the trouble is that if you supply a wife for two sides of a man's character – for utility, so to speak, and for diversion – he may, not unreasonably, demand that every side and angle and facet of his jewel-like nature have its own feminine setting. That was probably Solomon's idea. Well, well! the time is not yet for this reasonable arrangement; and it is possible that trade in galvanized buckets will never warrant its extensive existence.

But all this is very frivolous compared to the reality of this poor woman's pain, a pain that finally evolved a plan which, although less picturesque than the harem, was of the same grade in the eye of the law, though, curiously enough, not in her own eye. She could not, as she expressed it to herself, be dead, so that her Thomas might have his wish; but he could think she was dead.

When this extraordinary idea came into Milly Dilworth's head, she felt as one imprisoned in darkness who sees, far off, the glimmer of daylight. He "could think she was dead!" And if he thought so, of course there could be nothing wrong in his marrying "her." (Miss Hayes's moral status did not enter into Milly's calculations.)

The light in her darkness dazzled poor Milly at first, and the way was not clear. It took two weeks of further thought to decide upon the step, and then to evolve its details; but one need not go into them as Milly did… As she sat at her work, day after day, she thought her plan out slowly and toilsomely. At first she kept balking at the enormity of it. Then some chance word would betray Tom's admiration for brains, and she would beat and spur her mind up to her project again… And at last she accepted it… Once accepted, the thing was settled. Her mind had about as much flexibility as a bar of lead, and there was no changing it. It only remained to decide upon the details. This she did slowly and painfully. Each step was planned, each contingency arranged for.

And by-and-by the day came to act.

The night before, at supper, Mrs. Dilworth, her hands stumbling among her teacups, said, faintly, "I'm going over to the other side of the river to-morrow to order some chickens from Mrs. Kensy."

"That Kensy house is right by the railroad station," Ned said, scowling; "I don't believe she has any hens."

"Yes, she has, Neddy," said Mrs. Dilworth.

Edwin frowned blackly. "I do wish you wouldn't call me by that absurd name, mother."

"I keep forgetting, Neddy dear."

Edwin held up his hands despairingly.

"What are you two people talking about?" demanded Thomas.

"I'm going to walk over, across the ice, to the Bend, to-morrow," said Milly.

"Walk!" her husband protested. "What do you walk for? It's cold as Greenland on the ice, and, besides, they were cutting at the pool by the Bend; you don't want to go that way, Milly. Take the stage round."

Mrs. Dilworth crumbled a piece of bread with shaking fingers, and said nothing.

"What time are you going, mother?" inquired Edwin.

"In the afternoon, about four."

"Why, you went there only two days ago," Edwin said, irritably. "I saw you on the back road carting a big bundle."

"It would have been more to the point if you'd done the carting for your mother," Tom Dilworth said, sharply.

His wife paled suddenly at that word about a bundle, but the subject was not pursued. Edwin said, grumbling, that he didn't see what possessed his mother to choose such an hour. "It's too dark for a lady to be out," Edwin protested.

"Too dark for a —grandmother!" his father said. "Don't you criticise your mother, young man." And then he added: "Look out for the places where the men were cutting, Milly. It hasn't frozen over yet."

And Mrs. Dilworth said, after a pause, "I know."

That night was a misery of dreams that the deed was done, broken by wakings desperate with the knowledge that it was yet to do. In the morning she seemed to have lost all power of words; she bore her husband's reproaches that Ned was late for breakfast; she went about her household duties; she watched the girls start for school (she did not kiss them; demonstrations of affection had never been possible to this dumb breast; but she stared after them with haggard eyes); and through it all she hardly uttered a word; when she did speak, it seemed as though she had to break, by agonizing effort, some actual lock upon her lips. When the girls had gone she looked about for her eldest; but Ned was not to be found. "I never knew him to go to the store before breakfast," she thought, miserably. His father, pulling on his coat in the hall, said that Ned was getting industrious to go to his work so early! His wife was silent.

When he started, whistling cheerfully,

she watched him from the window, straining her eyes until he was out of sight. Then she went up-stairs to her bedroom, and, opening his closet door, leaned her head against one of his coats, trembling very much.

Afterwards she wandered about the house in aimless, restless waiting for Ned.

In the course of the morning Tom sent over to inquire why the boy had not come to the store. Milly told the messenger to tell Mr. Dilworth that Mr. Edwin was not at home. "Say I thought he was at the store," she said. "I'll give him his father's message when he comes in to dinner." But he did not come in to dinner; and minute by minute the afternoon ticked itself away. She had said to herself that she must start about four, before Nancy and Mary got home from school. "It must be so that it would be dark when I was coming back," she reminded herself. "If I leave here at four, and get my bundle from Mrs. Kensy at five, it would be pretty dark by the time I would be going home. Mrs. Kensy will tell them that it was dark."

At four Edwin had not appeared; Milly, having no imagination, had no anxiety; she merely gave up, patiently, the hope of a wordless good-bye. But she kept looking for him; and when she finally put on her things, she paused and turned back to the window, to look once more towards Old Chester; but there was no sign of Ned. It did not occur to her to postpone her plan; her mind, run into the mould of sacrifice, had hardened into rigidity. So at last, miserably, the tears running down her face, she stepped out into the cold and went down through the garden to the river. There she turned and looked back, with dumb passion in her eyes; the firelight was winking from the parlor windows and all the warm commonplace of life seemed to beckon her. She put her muff up to wipe her eyes, but she made no prayer or farewell; her silence had reached her soul by that time.

It was very cold; the ice was rough, and the wind had blown the dry snow about in light drifts and ripples, so that walking was not difficult. She trudged out, up towards the Bend, skirting the place where the men had been cutting. They had gone home now, and the ice about the black, open space of water was quite deserted. The wind came keenly down the river, blowing an eddy of snow before it; the bleak sky lay like lead over the woods along the shore. There was not a house in sight. Amelia Dilworth looked furtively about her; then she bent down and scraped at the snow on the edge of the ice, as one might do who, in the water, was struggling for a hold upon it. After that, for a long time, she stood there, looking dumbly at the current running, black and silent, between the edges of the ice. At last, her hand over her mouth to check some inarticulate lament, she stooped again, and put her little black muff on the broken snow close to the water.

When she reached Mrs. Kensy's she was quite calm. She said briefly that she had come to order some chickens; " – and I'll take that bundle I asked you to keep for me."

The woman brought it, and Milly tucked her fingers through the stout strings she had tied so carefully a few days before. When she would open it in the woods, and put on the new dress and shawl and the heavy veil that it held, and then, in the dark, take the half-past-five train, no one would know that Thomas Dilworth's wife had fled away into another State. They would find the muff, and they would think – there would be only one thing to think.

"I want the chickens for Sunday," she said; "please send them over on Saturday." Then it came into her mind with a little gush of happiness that she would pay for them on the spot, instead of having the bill sent to Tom, as was her custom; she had drawn a sum of money from the bank a fortnight ago – a small sum, but her own; now it was all in her purse; she would buy Tom's Sunday dinner out of her little fund. Except to leave him, it was the last thing she would ever do for him.

She put her hand into her pocket – and chilled all over. Then stood blankly looking at the woman; then plunged her hand down again into her pocket; then exclaimed under her breath; then tore her bag open and fumbled distractedly among brushes and night-gown and slippers; then pulled her pocket wrong side out with trembling fingers.

"My purse!" she said, breathlessly. Then she searched everything again.

"It ain't any difference," Mrs. Kensy protested.

"I must have left it at home. I can't go back for it. It is too late."

"What for?" said Mrs. Kensy.

"The – the train."

"Oh, you was going on, was you?" Mrs. Kensy said. "Well, I can let you have the price of a ticket a little ways."

But Mrs. Dilworth, with shaking hands, pulled everything out of her bag, shook her skirts, fumbled in the bosom of her dress, ran out and searched the garden-path, strained her eyes across the snow on the river – all in vain. "Oh, my!" she said, faintly.

"But I can lend you the price of a ticket, ma'am," Mrs. Kensy said again.

"No matter," Mrs. Dilworth said, dully. "I'll go home."

Even as she spoke she heard the train tooting faintly far up the valley. She sat down, feeling suddenly sick.

There was nothing to do but to go home. She remembered now how in her agitated watching for her son she had put her purse down on the corner of her bureau – and left it there. Yes; there was nothing to do but go back. "I can start to-morrow," she said to herself. But in the sick reaction of the moment she knew that she could never start again; her purpose had been shattered by the blow. She took her bundle – the bundle that meant flight and disguise and self-sacrifice, and that stood for the shrewdness which is so characteristic of the kind of stupidity which forgets the purse – and went stumbling down in the darkness to the river. She said to herself that she must get her muff; and she thought heavily that it would be pretty hard to carry so many things across the ice. She was numb with the shock of interrupted ecstasy. She could not feel even mortification – only fatigue. She was so tired that, seeing in the darkness a hurrying figure approaching her, she did not recognize her husband until he was almost upon her.

"Milly? My God! Milly!"

He had her muff in his hand, and as he reached her he caught at her shoulder and shook her roughly. "Milly – I thought – I thought – " He stammered with agitation. "I found this muff, and I thought it was yours; and Neddy's gone, too, and I thought – both of you – "

"Neddy gone?" she repeated, dully.

She stood still on the ice, trying to get her wits together.

"He's disappeared. He isn't in town. He went out early this morning. To skate, I suppose. Nora saw him from her window; at about six, she says. And this open water" – she felt him quiver at her side – "and then this muff – "

"No!" she said. "I – I made a mistake." She did not take in the words about Ned.

"But where is he? Nobody's seen him. I suppose I'm a fool, but I'm uneasy. I came to meet you because I thought you might know. But when I saw this muff – it is yours, Milly, isn't it? – I got into a panic about you, too."

"Why," she said – "it's mine; yes. I – I left it – I suppose. Neddy wasn't with me. Did you think he was with me? I don't understand," she ended, bewildered.

"He hasn't been at home all day," her husband said, "nor in town, either." And then he repeated the story, while she looked at him, slow understanding dawning in her eyes.

"Neddy – gone! Where?"

"But that's what I don't know," the father said.

And his wife, dazed still, but awake to the trouble in his voice, began to comfort him, alarm rising slowly in her own heart like an icy wave.

"Maybe he went to see somebody in Upper Chester?"

"But he doesn't know anybody at Upper Chester. Of course it's possible. Only – you gave me such a fright, Milly!" Mrs. Dilworth put her hand over her mouth and trembled. "However, I guess he's all right, as you say. I guess we'll find him at home when we get back. It's lucky I came to meet you, because I can lug your things for you. How did you drop your muff, dear? Here, take it; your hands must be cold. Oh, Milly, you gave me an awful fright – it was right on the very edge of the ice; those confounded cutters hadn't put up any ropes. You do really think there's no reason to be uneasy about Ned?"

"No," she said. Her knees shook; she had to pause to swallow before she spoke. Oh, what if he should find her out? As she trudged along at his side in the cold darkness she said to herself, with a sickening sense of apprehension, that if he found her out she should die. Then as her mind cleared she tried in her brief way to encourage him about their boy; yet, as they drew nearer home and she saw again the firelit windows, she began to awaken to the situation: Neddy had gone out to skate; at six, did Nora say? Of course he might have stopped to see somebody in Upper Chester; only Neddy never went to see anybody anywhere – except (Amelia Dilworth had forgotten her!) – except that Hayes girl – and she wasn't at home. Yes, it was strange; and worrying, perhaps. But she only repeated, as they went hurrying up to the back door, that she was sure Neddy was all right. But she held her breath to listen for his voice haranguing his sisters in the sitting-room. Instead, the two girls came running out to meet them.

"Oh, father, did you find Ned? Oh, here's mother; she'll know where he is."

"Mother, I'm sort of scared about him," Mary whispered.

"He's gone to see some friend," the mother said, and her brevity, so agonizing to her, seemed to reassure the others.

"He hasn't any friend except Miss Helen Hayes," Nancy said, "and she went away last week."

"Maybe he's gone to hunt her up," Mary said, giggling, and her father told her to be quiet.

"It's thoughtless in him to be so late. But your mother isn't worried, so I guess we needn't be. Your mother says there is not the slightest cause for anxiety, and she knows."

"Come to supper," Amelia said, her heart sinking; and the commonplace suggestion cheered them all, although Tom Dilworth did not like to lose the assurance of his wife's presence, even to have her go up-stairs to take off her bonnet, and went with her, saying again, decidedly, that there was, as she said, no possible reason for uneasiness, and that he himself hadn't a particle of anxiety. "But I'll give that boy a piece of my mind for worrying you so. Why, Milly, what a fat pocket-book! Where did you get so much money, my dear? I didn't know the hardware trade was so prosperous. Look here, Milly – it is pretty late, honestly?"

She took her purse out of his hands, her own trembling. For a moment she could not speak, and leaned forward to look into the swinging glass and make pretence of untying a knot in her bonnet-strings. "Oh, he'll come home soon," she said.

In spite of assurances, the tea-table was not very cheerful – the girls stopped short in the middle of a sentence to listen for a step on the porch. Tom got up twice to look out of the window. Mrs. Dilworth thought she heard the gate slam, and held her breath; but no Ned appeared. The evening was endlessly long. Tom pretended to read his newspaper, and kept his eye on one spot for five minutes at a time. At ten he packed the girls off to bed; at eleven he was walking up and down the room; at twelve he told his wife to go to bed; but somehow or other he went himself, while she sat up, "to let the boy in."

You can make excuses for this sort of lateness up to a certain point; but it is curious that at about 2.30 in the morning the excuses all give out. Tom Dilworth got up and dressed. "Something has happened, Milly," he said, brokenly. His wife put her arms around him, trying to comfort him.

"If Miss Hayes was only at home," she said, "maybe she would have some idea of his plans. He might have told her. And she could tell us what to do."

"Who?" said Tom – "that Hayes girl? Maybe so. I hadn't thought of her. No, I don't believe she'd be any help. She hasn't got much sense in that kind of way."

Such ages and ages was Milly away from her great experience of jealousy that she felt no relief at this bald betrayal. Together they went out onto the porch, listening, and straining their eyes. The moon was just going down; it was very cold; far off a dog barked. But there was no human sound. The two haggard people went shivering back into the hall, where a candle burned dimly in the glass bell hanging at the foot of the stairs.

"Something has certainly happened," Tom said again. "Oh, Milly, you are always so calm and I go all to pieces." He leaned his elbow against the wall and hid his face in his arm. His wife heard him groan.

"And – I've been hard on him sometimes," he said.

She took his hand and kissed it silently.

Poor Tom went to pieces more than once in the days that followed – dreadful days of panic and despair. Old Chester, aroused at daybreak by the terrified father, decided at once that the boy was drowned; but everybody stood ready to help the stricken parents with hopeful words to the contrary, words which rang as hollow to Thomas and his wife as to the well-meaning liars.

It was on Wednesday that he had disappeared. On Friday they dragged the river through the open holes; on Saturday, blew up the ice and dragged all the way down to the second bend. That night Nancy and Mary crept away to cry in their own room; Tom sat with his head buried in his arms; his wife knelt beside him, touching him sometimes with a quiet hand, but never speaking. Dr. Lavendar came in and put his hand on Tom's shoulder for a minute, and then went away. The firelight slipped flickering about the room; sometimes the coal in the grate snapped and chuckled, and a spurt of flame shone on the two suddenly aged faces. And then into the silent room came, with hurried, shamefaced triumph – Edwin.

"I – I'm afraid you've been anxious – "

"He ought to have written," said another voice, breathless and uncertain, and breaking into nervous laughter. "It is naughty in him to have forgotten. I – I told him so."